Vectorworks has teamed up with the Fundacío Mies van der Rohe to give architecture, urban planning, and landscape design students across Europe an opportunity to gain recognition for creating remarkable experiences. As an extension of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, the Young Talent Architecture Award (YTAA) is open to European higher education institutions, which must register and nominate their student’s best capstone projects from the 2015-2016 academic year by July 29, 2016 to qualify.

François Lévy, AIA, is on a mission to change the status quo of BIM use. According to Lévy, who is co-founder of Lévy Kohlhaas Architecture, BIM is too often employed solely for documentation purposes, and the design capabilities of the process are not realized. We talked with Lévy to highlight four tools to leverage in Vectorworks software that make the job of designing for accessible spaces easier and less prone to error.

This past Sunday was the biggest night in theatre as the best and brightest on Broadway took to the stage at the Beacon Theatre in New York to celebrate the 2016 Tony Awards. Vectorworks Spotlight software users took home some of the top design awards of the night. We congratulate these talented designers and will continue to admire their work as they blaze new paths in the world of scenic and lighting design.

We’re always pushing the boundaries of what design software can accomplish here at Vectorworks, but just like anyone else, we run the risk of getting caught up in our day-to-day responsibilities and losing sight of new possibilities. That’s why we have Innovation Weeks: times where we set aside our normal tasks to focus on new ideas and pursue unexpected solutions. In doing so, we’ve been able to bring you new tools like our integrated graphical scripting feature, Marionette, which started out as an idea pitched during an Innovation Week.

Since 1965, the Henry Hewes Design Awards have recognized outstanding achievement in design for theatre on Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway, celebrating the fields of scenic design, costume design, lighting design, and notable effects: a unique category that includes achievement in sound, music, video, and puppetry. We would like to congratulate the Vectorworks Spotlight users who are among the 66 nominated artists and four award winners from 49 productions that ran during the 2014-2015 season.

The days were warm, the nights were cool, and the shows were hot at Rock in Rio: Lisbon. Over our week in Portugal, we worked hard and played hard, taking every opportunity to interview the lighting designers working at the festival.

Since announcing that this year’s annual Build Earth Live competition would focus on designing a high-speed Hyperloop station connecting Dubai and Fujairah, the concept has gone from experimental to tangible. In the past, this 48-hour competition called for designers around the world to come together as teams and create innovative structures using BIM workflows and cloud technology, but these designs were never more than models. This year, Build Earth Live organizers Asite, supported by headline sponsor Vectorworks, have partnered with Dubai Future Foundation, Dubai's Road and Transport Authority, and Hyperloop One, a company developing the world's first Hyperloop, to potentially bring the winning design to life.

Vectorworks celebrated its 30th anniversary with the release of MODUS news 5, showcasing designs that capture unique interior-exterior relationships between structures and their surroundings. From a living roof in the center of a bustling city to an open-air art museum that follows the natural topography of a rolling landscape, this issue highlights how visionary designers use Vectorworks software to change the way we understand the interactions between design and the natural world.